The bonnet was clean; brand-spanking new, in sharp contrast to the rust-flecked sides. It was a deep fire-engine red. Sharp-looking. Arnie touched it possessively, and the touch turned into a caress.
'Yeah. I put that on myself.
Something about that jagged on me. He had done it all himself, hadn't he?
'You said you were going to turn it into a showpiece,' I said. 'I think I'm starting to believe you.' I walked around to the driver's side. The upholstery on the insides of the doors and floor was still dirty and scuffed up, but now the front seat cover had been replaced as well as the back one.
'It's going to be beautiful,' Leigh said, but there was a flat note in her voice - it wasn't as naturally bright and effervescent as it had been when we were talking about the game - and that made me glance at her. A glance was all it took. She didn't like Christine. I realized it just like that completely and absolutely, as if I had plucked one of her brainwaves out of the air. She would try to like the car because she liked Arnie. But . . . she wasn't ever going to really like it.
'The horn doesn't work, and sometimes the tail-lights go out when I step on the brake. It's a dead short somewhere, I think, but so far I haven't been able to chase it out.'
I glanced at the new windscreen - there was a new inspection sticker on it, Arnie followed my glance and managed to look both embarrassed and a bit truculent at the same time. 'Will gave me my sticker. He knows it's ninety per cent there.' And besides, I thought, you had this hot date, right?
'It's not dangerous, is it?' Leigh asked, addressing the question somewhere between Arnie and me. Her brow had creased slightly - I think maybe she sensed a sudden cold current between Arnie and me.
'No,' I said. 'I don't think so. When you ride with Arnie you're riding with the original Old Creeping Jesus anyway.'
That broke the odd little pocket of tension that had built up. From the playing field there was a discordant shriek of brass, and then the band instructor's voice, carrying to us, thin but perfectly clear under the low sky: 'Again, please! This is Rodgers and Hammerstein, not rock and ro-ool! Again, please!'
The three of us looked at each other. Arnie and I started to laugh, and after a moment Leigh joined in. Looking at her, I felt that momentary jealousy again. I wanted nothing but the best for my friend Arnie, but she was really something - seventeen going on eighteen, gorgeous, perfect, healthy, alive to everything in her world. Roseanne was beautiful in her way, but Leigh made Roseanne look like a tree-sloth taking a nap.
Was that when I started to want her? When I started to want my best friend's girl? Yeah, I suppose it was. But I swear to you, I never would have put a move on her if things had happened differently. I just don't think they were meant to happen differently. Or maybe I just have to feel that way.
We better go, Arnie, or we won't get a good seat in the visitors' bleachers,' Leigh said with ladylike sarcasm.
Arnie smiled. She was still holding his arm lightly, and he looked rather bowled over by it all. Why not? If it had been me, having my first experience with a live girl, and one as pretty as Leigh, I would have been three-quarters to being in love with her already. I wished him nothing but well with her. I guess I want you to believe that, even if you don't believe anything else I have to tell you from here on out. If anyone deserved a little happiness, it was Arnie.
The rest of the team had gone into the visitors' dressing rooms at the back of the gymnasium wing of the school, and now Coach Puffer poked his head out.
'Do you think you could favour us with your presence, Mr Guilder?' he called. 'I know it's a lot to ask, and I hope you'll forgive me if you had something more important to do, but if you don't, would you get your tail down into this locker room?'